Due to rapid enhancements in computing power, memory, display, etc., smartphones and related mobile devices have emerged as a platform for executing a variety of different applications. With the increasing popularity of mobile applications, companies like Apple™ and Google™ offer online application distribution centers. An indication of the popularity of the use of application distribution centers is that, to date, over 200 million iOS users have downloaded over 15 billion applications from the Apple™ application retrieval facility, referred to as the App Store. Many more mobile device users have downloaded applications from other sources, for example, from vendor websites and other content storage repositories in communication with the internet.
A mobile device user typically subscribes to a service offered by a telecommunications (“telecom”) network provider, which provides the physical infrastructure for transmitting requested applications from an app store to the mobile device user during a downloading operation.